The legendary treasure of Thomas J. Beale with a lot of gold, silver and jewelry, worth about 60 million USD (equivalent to 1360 billion VND), has remained a mystery for the past 2 centuries.

Many go bankrupt, neglect family and friends, and spend decades chasing their dreams of treasure. – Photo: Heleno

Thomas J. Beale was a 19th century explorer. To avoid theft, Beale created three separate ciphers to conceal his exact location and let his heirs know about his treasure.

Over the past two centuries, countless treasure hunters, computer scientists and even the US military have tried to crack three ciphers to find the burial site, but no one has succeeded. labour.

Beale’s codes are universal ciphers, where each character represents a letter in the sample text. Just knowing what the sample text is, the decoding will become extremely simple. However, no one knows the sample text of the treasure cipher.

Cryptographers, both professionals and amateurs, have consulted all sorts of important texts from the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta to the Monroe Doctrine and several Shakespeare plays, but all to no effect. .

Much later, an anonymous amateur cryptographer accidentally found the key to Beale’s cipher #2 – The Declaration of Independence and revealed an interesting part of Beale’s encrypted message. .

Discovering the luck of the number 2 lock code and the desire to become a millionaire has inspired so many people to try their luck. – Photo: Guardian

The second ciphertext reads: “I have deposited the treasure 4 miles from Budford, in a pit or vault six feet deep underground, the following, jointly owned by the persons named on the 3rd note. including: 1,024 pounds of solid gold and 3,812 pounds of silver buried in November 1819. The second time gold was hidden in December 1281 included 1,907 pounds of gold, 1,288 pounds of silver, along with jewels converted from silver in St.Louis for safe circulation worth 13,000 USD. All possessions are kept in iron crates, iron lids. The cellar is paved with stone, the containers are placed on the stone and stacked on top of each other. Paper #1 describes the exact location of the vault, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find it.”

Based on the second ciphertext, it is calculated that the treasure contains 35,052oz of gold (worth about $63 million in September 2011 prices), 61,200oz of silver (worth about $1 million in 2010) and jewelry. price of 13,000 USD in 1818, or about 180,000 USD in 2010. The whole treasure is about 3 tons.

The law in Virginia states that treasure hunters will keep whatever they find, even if it’s someone else’s private property. This rule makes treasure seekers feel excited, but it can cause a lot of trouble.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard they try, no one can decipher the number 1 or number 3.

The number 1 ciphertext left by explorer Thomas J. Beale. – Photo: Getty

Someone was convinced that the treasure was buried in an old cemetery, so they dug up people’s graves and were arrested.

Even many people looking for Beale’s treasure have fallen into bankruptcy. This actually happened to the anonymous cryptographer who accidentally cracked cipher #2.

According to a 19th-century author, after being inspired by the success of this anonymous cryptographer, he abandoned his family and friends to pursue an illusionary dream worth trillions of dong. And he’s certainly not the only example.

A man named Stan Czanowski spent $70,000 over 7 years on dynamometers and bulldozers to find the treasure. In the 1980s, another man went bankrupt after blasting rock mines across Virginia for six months straight.

“Once you’re hooked on a treasure hunt, it’s hard to get out. You can be blinded and mesmerized by it. Like drugs or gambling, it can make you a gambler on everything. a dream,” says Peter Viemeister, author of The Beale Treasure: A History of Mystery.